Monday, September 6

Talk of the devil. Following my brief mention of his recent hot streak, there's a typically long - and typically saccharine - piece in the New York Times about Pedro Almodovar. But it's worth wading through it for the occasional insight into his work.

It's the usual rules with Times links: they're good for about seven days, then the pieces hit their archive and I think you then have to pay to access them. Even jolly little cultural tourists like me here in the capital of Blighty.

Truffling around, I also read this blurb on a blurb in Time magazine about Glasgow being the new Detroit. Or maybe I should say it's now our Detroit. Fine, whatever. After London, as after New York. That is, in relation to the megalopolises they're "small potatoes", to use a phrase given to Hyman Roth in Godfather 2.

As the Time article's main thrust concerns the current music scene, I can only restate that I've seen and heard plenty of what I feel are the best of these Glasgow bands - Franz Ferdinand, Belle & Sebastian and the Delgados - and they are all good; but none of them are great like the Libertines. As for the likes of Snow Patrol ... well, can't they start doing gigs in Russian schools? They're no use here.

Don't you feel that some groups should be force-fed crack cocaine until they raise a little spunk in their music?

It must be said that, as dictators go, you're kind of pathetic. Instead of using a military coup
or systematic persecution to get power, you just happen to be the head of the only party in Great Britain
that isn't a cretinous joke. While not very impressive, it is none the less effective:
you can do whatever the hell you like without any chance of being voted out of office.

Enough people recognise that the alternatives would have them selling their parents and children
on eBay to pay for their own dental care (forever seeking to replicate your Colgate grin),
or bowing down in sandal-socked subservience to theocratic murderers who surprisingly declined
the liberal offer to shake hands and kiss it better.

As such, you can choose to ignore the rabble, or piss on them from a great height - and get away with it,
preaching the Gospel according to Blair using bits of whatever eastern philosophies
happen to be floating through your transom.